


what else would you do for fun

by yeswayappianway



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 03:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21331555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway
Summary: Clark gritted his teeth. “Just because you can do work doesn’t mean you need to. You already went on patrol, you’re injured, just come to bed.”“I don’t need coddling.” Bruce was only dressed in loose pants and a tshirt but he managed to hold himself in a way that perfectly conveyed the body armor and cape he so clearly wanted to be wearing.Clark could only gape. “Coddled— Bruce, three of your ribs are bruised, your shoulder was nearly ripped out of its socket, you have a goddamn knife wound on your left calf, and that’s just from the last forty eight hours!”Bruce shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 200





	what else would you do for fun

**Author's Note:**

> title from You'll Need a New Backseat Driver, by The New Pornographers (i listened to about 12 of their songs on repeat while writing this)
> 
> this isn't set in any particular canon, but i've been reading a lot of man of steel/batman v superman fic lately, so it's somewhat influenced by that mood
> 
> huge thanks to sasha for beta-ing this and also appreciating this concept when i first texted it to her. <3 <3 <3
> 
> CONTENT NOTE: i didn't tag for this, because i don't think it fits any tag in particular, but a character harms their partner in this. there's a more spoilery/thorough note at the end of the fic if you want to read that first. i also almost tagged this "canon-typical levels of manipulation", and i explain that slightly more in the note as well.

Despite what certain people may imply, Bruce didn’t act very much like Batman when they were in bed together, anymore than he acted like the Bruce Wayne of celebrity gossip columns. Usually, he was just Bruce, and that honesty was more appealing to Clark than anything else Bruce could possibly give him. Right now, however, Bruce was fully Batman and it was beginning to really irritate Clark.

“Bruce, come back to bed,” Clark said, exasperated.

Bruce didn’t look at him. He just started gathering his clothes back up again and redressing himself. To anyone else, and certainly to someone who didn’t know Bruce particularly well, it might seem like he was moving smoothly. But Clark could see the minute winces and tensions Bruce was pushing through, and wasn’t that just the problem?

“If you don’t want me here,” Bruce growled, “I might as well go back out. I have a lead to follow up.” He moved away from the bed and Clark’s hand shot up, but almost as quickly, he remembered himself and lowered it. Bruce wasn’t superhuman, Clark saw him notice anyway. It made something about his face close off, to the point where Clark could almost see the cowl over it, in a strange reversal of his normal vision, an extra layer appearing rather than seeing through to the layer below.

“Of course I want you here,” Clark said. He tried to interject his usual levity. “Besides, it’s your bedroom, I think I would be the one leaving.”

He got a flat stare in return. “I have work to do.”

Gritting his teeth, Clark tried not to get mad. It was what Bruce wanted, after all. It hadn’t been that long since casual antagonism was their main mode of interaction, and he knew perfectly well that Bruce had cultivated it intentionally. “Just because you _can_ do work doesn’t mean you need to. You already went on patrol, you’re injured, just come to bed.”

“I don’t need coddling.” Bruce was only dressed in loose pants and a tshirt but he managed to hold himself in a way that perfectly conveyed the body armor and cape he so clearly wanted to be wearing.

Clark could only gape. “Coddled— Bruce, three of your ribs are bruised, your shoulder was nearly ripped out of its socket, you have a goddamn knife wound on your left calf, and that’s just from the last forty eight hours!”

Bruce shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the point!” Clark wanted to strangle him, but that would be counter-productive. Didn't he _understand_? “I’m not trying to coddle you, I’m trying—“ Clark stopped. His breath caught in his throat. Funny how he didn’t technically need the air, but he was the one choked up while Bruce’s breathing was as even as if they were discussing the weather.

The thing was, Clark wasn’t a child anymore. He’d been controlling himself for most of his life now, but he also had a much better idea of what he could do if he wasn’t. Clark was Superman. He could hear so much, so precisely, and he made a habit of diving into fights. He knew how bone sounded when it broke, the way a person’s breath sputtered as something heavy slammed into their chest, could even, if he was being careful, hear the sound of blood seeping into someone's lungs. He could imagine, with perfect sensory detail, what it might sound like if he lost control on Bruce.

He wasn’t coddling Bruce. He was trying to protect him from Clark.

Bruce had crossed his arms while Clark was lost in gruesome imaginings. “What is it, then?” he asked. “Why haven’t you touched me since I got back tonight?”

Clark closed his eyes and tried to stay calm. Bruce knew perfectly well how much Clark thought about this, about what could happen if Clark forgot himself. He’d hoped they could go a bit further into their relatively new relationship before this came to a full argument. He should have known better, Clark thought a little bitterly. Of course Bruce wouldn’t let anything go. Clark opened his eyes again but didn’t say anything.

Bruce’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly, and he turned to go. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said, and headed for the bedroom door.

Suddenly, Clark was mad. Really, honestly mad in a way he didn’t get often. This was Bruce proving a point, and Clark didn’t know what the point was, but it wasn’t worth Bruce going out again, letting himself get hurt even more. Before Bruce had even reached for the doorknob, Clark was next to him, grabbing his upper arm.

Bruce let out a breath like it had been punched out of him. It wasn’t a loud noise. If he had been anyone else, Clark would have thought he’d stubbed his toe. But Bruce wasn’t anyone else, he routinely took enough abuse to have a less trained fighter screaming and he did it without even making a sound, so for him to make this noise—Clark dropped his arm.

“Bruce,” Clark whispered, feeling disgust curl in his chest. Replaying the last seconds in his head, Clark realized the other noise he had been distracted from: Bruce’s already banged-up shoulder popping out of its socket. He had done that. He’d been so eager to stop Bruce from getting hurt that he’d done exactly what he was trying to prevent. He stared at the floor, frozen. “I’m sorry.”

“Clark,” Bruce said, and something about his voice was different. He didn’t sound upset, or even placating. He sounded… smug. Clark abruptly looked up at Bruce, hoping he was interpreting things wrong. He wasn’t. Bruce was smiling slightly, a hint of triumph in the brightness of his eyes.

“You did that on purpose,” Clark said, the realization washing over him. He hadn’t pulled Bruce’s arm that hard, but because of the way Bruce had turned to open the door, it had been the shoulder Bruce had already injured earlier that night. He had used his speed, but Bruce would have been prepared, had reacted to that level of speed from him before. He would have been able to go with the move enough not to let Clark pull his arm that way. If Bruce had been trying hard enough, he probably could have suppressed his reaction to the pain, too. “You wanted me to hurt you. Jesus, Bruce, I—“ Clark stopped. He didn’t know how to finish that sentence, didn’t know if he wanted to keep looking into Bruce’s victorious expression.

“Yes, I did, and it worked,” Bruce said plainly. He ran his good hand—Bruce wouldn’t have a bad hand right now if not for Clark, he thought despairingly—up Clark’s arm in a manner that usually would have seemed soothing. It didn’t work. “Clark, I need you to understand this. If we’re going to—“ Bruce paused, with an awkwardness that didn’t come up much in any facet of his life. “If this relationship is going to go anywhere, I need you to know that you will have to deal with me when I’m injured. You know me, you know what I do. I’m almost always injured in one way or another,” he said, and he was so matter-of-fact about his own pain that Clark didn’t even know how to respond.

He knew what he cared about the most right now, though. “But _I_ did this,” Clark said. He couldn’t keep his thoughts in order enough to get any further, because they just kept circling. The noise Bruce had made, all the horrific sounds of violence preserved in his brain, the possibility of how much worse this could have been.

“Yes, you did,” Bruce said again. “But that’s my point.” His hand glided up to Clark’s jaw, and he tried to turn Clark’s face toward him. Clark was torn between two competing impulses: the need to not see Bruce’s face right now, and the desire to never resist Bruce physically like this again. He did neither, because in that slight second of indecision, Bruce’s hand dropped away. “You hurt me. I’m still right here. You’re still here. Clark, I’ve tried to hurt you _on purpose_ before and we still ended up here. Do you understand?”

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Clark yelled. It was too frantic, too wild, when all he wanted right now was to be in control. Maybe that’s the lesson he should have been learning here, regardless of what horrific point Bruce was trying to make about his own pain tolerance; that when Bruce was involved, Clark would never be fully in control.

Bruce laughed softly. “I know.” He smiled, and he looked at Clark so fondly that Clark wanted to look away again. “But I need you to understand that as far as I’m concerned, there’s a level of pain that’s unavoidable in my life, and I get to decide what that is.”

“I don’t want to be something you train yourself to suffer through,” Clark said, the words feeling sour in his mouth.

“It’s not about suffering, it’s about risks,” Bruce snapped. “Clark. Do you know how much force is required to dislocate someone’s shoulder? It’s within the range of something I could possibly do. I know very well what you’re capable of, Clark, I understand what you’re afraid of, but I also know what you’re _likely_ to do, and I find the risk acceptably low.”

Something about the way he said it made Clark’s circling thoughts skip. _Risk_. He remembered a hundred times he’d tried to save someone, thinking through how to approach a situation and contain the danger, and he thought of Bruce doing the same thing with an added calculation to what his body could withstand. It didn’t make him feel better, but he could listen to what Bruce was saying now. “I just…” Clark began, and trailed off.

“Here,” Bruce said, turning toward the bed. “Help me pop it back in.” He laid face down on the edge of the bed, his arm hanging off. Clark just stared at where he could see the bump of Bruce’s shoulder where it shouldn’t be. Bruce lifted his head off the bed to raise an eyebrow at him. “Do I need to give you directions?” he said.

Swallowing, Clark walked over. “What am I doing?”

“Just hold on to my wrist and pull gently down. It will take a while to slide back into the socket,” Bruce said. He sounded so incredibly blasé about it that Clark almost laughed. Or maybe that was just all his competing reactions bubbling up in whatever way they could. Clark pulled gently on Bruce's wrist. He could feel Bruce’s pulse, the warmth of his skin. He let himself focus on Bruce’s calm breathing and the solidity of Bruce’s arm in his hands.

“So,” Clark started. “How many times has your shoulder been dislocated before?”

“More than medically advisable,” Bruce muttered.

Clark was feeling his way toward a point, but he needed some help to get there. “And I assume it didn’t stop you from going about your normal life?”

Bruce shook his head slightly, constrained by the way he’d partially sunk into the mattress. “Bruce Wayne can only have so many skiing accidents. Or golf mishaps. Or—you get the point.”

“So what you’re saying is that you trust me not to injure you more than you already do to yourself and already know how to work through.” 

“Yes,” and Clark was treated to the sight of Bruce smiling up at him, lopsided, with one corner of his mouth pressed against the sheets.

It made Clark want to relax, but he wasn’t quite there yet. “And when you already have injuries, you want me to, what, just ignore them?”

“Yes,” Bruce repeated. “I’m not saying to show no caution, and even I can admit when I’ve really fucked myself up, but like this? This is normal for me, Clark, and if you can’t treat it as such—“ Bruce broke off, and he looked uncertain for the first time since he’d been gotten back tonight. If he was someone else, Clark would have expected that he might look away. But Bruce wasn’t anyone else, so he just hardened his expression and stared directly into Clark’s eyes. “If you can’t treat it as such, then this won’t work.”

Clark was gripped by a sudden wave of fondness for him. Bruce was stubborn and reckless with his own well-being and took the hardest route whenever it presented itself, and Clark couldn’t imagine not having him in his life. “I think I can do that,” Clark said, and he smiled faintly. He was still holding Bruce’s wrist, and it wasn’t lost on him that by helping Bruce re-locate his shoulder, Bruce had forced him into another demonstration of his own restraint, and Clark couldn’t help but admire it.

Bruce still had that unnatural stillness that edged into the performance Clark associated with the Batman cowl, but Clark could see when Bruce chose to let it melt away. “Good,” he said, now face down and words muffled by the mattress. “Because sex is usually a very good way to ignore bodily discomfort.”

He couldn’t help it. Clark snorted. “A dislocated shoulder is just a bodily discomfort? I’d hate to know what you classify a broken leg as.”

“Deeply inconvenient,” Bruce grumbled. “Oh,” he said, with slight surprise, as Clark felt a shift in his arm. “I think you can let go now.” Clark was a little hesitant, but he did, and Bruce sat up and gingerly rotated his shoulder. 

“All better?” Clark asked mildly. Bruce made a face, but nodded at him. “Great. I have an ultimatum of my own, then,” he said.

“Of course,” Bruce said, but Clark could see the sudden tension that had been gone a second ago.

“Never do that to me again,” he said. “I get why you did it, but tricking me into hurting you? That was way beyond okay, and if you ever pull something like that again, I…” Clark wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence exactly, but he tried anyway. “I don’t know if I can make that work.”

“Understood,” Bruce said.

“Promise?” Clark pressed.

Bruce met his gaze. “Yes.” Clark didn’t know if he believed him, but he chose to anyway.

“In that case,” Clark said, and threw himself onto the other side of the bed. It wasn’t particularly careful, and it jostled Bruce as he landed. “Come here.”

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT NOTE: clark dislocates bruce's shoulder. he thinks it's accidental and his fault and reacts accordingly, but he realizes that bruce in fact manipulated him into doing it. if there's anything you think i should tag, please let me know! i'm happy to add tags or additional warnings.
> 
> if you want to yell more about clark kent, or anything else dc comics-related, you can find me on twitter at steelinstories!


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